PADM 510 American Public University System ?Public Based Management Paper Which of these theorists best describes the future of Public Administration? Whic

PADM 510 American Public University System ?Public Based Management Paper Which of these theorists best describes the future of Public Administration? Which one(s) missed the mark, in your opinion? Use your sources (references attached) to back what you say!

Must provide a critical review of the questions, topics and issues posed. Individual postings should include a full discussion of the content of the question posed and explain how it relates to the concepts in the weekly text readings (attached) and other resources. The postings should be analytic in nature and include comparisons/contrasts, and examples that can bolster your point.

This can be accomplished by

· Validating with additional evidence from the literature.

· Posing a thoughtful question with commentary which generates further discussion.

· Providing an alternative point-of-view, with evidence and examples.

· Offering additional insight into how the concept might be understood, with evidence provided with real world examples. Commentary
An Open Letter
to “Dirty Hands”
Theorists from a
Public Manager
(or, The Pitfalls of Divorcing
Theory from Practice)
JONATHAN ANDERSON
Abstract
This open letter responds to what is commonly known as “dirty hands” literature.
The writings so designated focus on the abstract question of whether ends justify
means in public policy, but neglect to address the practical ramifications of policy
implementation. A review of the background of the dirty hands question is followed
by a critique of theory that ignores the moral agency of the public officials called
upon to perform such acts.
Keywords: dirty hands, ethics, implementation, moral agency, practitioner, theory
vs. practice
Under the guise of national security threats, and through the rhetoric of terrorism,
the process of democratic law and the idea of constitutional limits are under attack.
Advocates of unilateral executive action argue that in extreme situations constitutional limitations may be ignored to achieve a perceived greater public good. Torture,
imprisonment without trial, and invasion of privacy without probable cause have all
been justified to protect the national interest. However, the attack on democracy is
more insidious. Proponents of “dirty hands” theory justify secret, extralegal action
in extreme, emergency narratives, and then use that precedent to justify illegal or
unconstitutional actions for nonemergency policy deemed, by the actor, to be in the
public interest (e.g., Newbold 2005).
Dirty hands is a concept which claims that people, particularly political leaders,
sometimes have to break the law—and thus dirty their hands—in the public inter-
Public Integrity, Summer 2014, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 305–315.
© 2014 ASPA. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 1099–9922 (print)/ISSN 1558–0989 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/PIN1099-9922160305
Jonathan Anderson
est.1 It is the age-old debate over whether ends justify means. Should the leader do
“whatever it takes” for the good of the state, even if it is illegal or immoral? The
problem with most dirty hands theory is that it tends to limit discussion to the role
of top leaders. Those who do all the theorizing forget about me, the public manager
who has to implement their policies.
Dirty hands literature portrays scenarios where policymakers are allowed, or even
expected, to undertake unethical or illegal actions to achieve the public interest. Theorists
“Dirty hands is a concept which claims most often focus on grand presidential actions
in times of national crisis. Rossiter’s (1948)
that people, particularly political
concept of constitutional dictatorship in the
leaders, sometimes have to break the
manner of Cincinnatus of Rome, or Lincoln’s
law—and thus dirty their hands—in
suspending of habeas corpus during the Civil
the public interest.”
War (Lincoln 1861) exemplifies this rationale. But while much of the literature begins
with examples of presidents and national
crises, the discussions often include a broader range of political actors.
In this open letter, I first lay out some background of the term “dirty hands” from
Jean-Paul Sartre and Michael Walzer, followed by a brief historical overview through
Machiavelli, Locke, and the U.S. Constitution. I then outline the real problem of dirty
hands theory, namely that it pays scant attention to the moral agency of the public
managers who perforce must carry out dubious actions decided upon by leaders.
Background
The starting point for much of the contemporary discourse is Michael Walzer’s
(1973) “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands.” He begins with the play
Les Mains Sales (“Dirty Hands”) by the French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre (1949).
The story concerns the decision by an underground resistance group in an occupied
Central European country during World War II to assassinate one of its own leaders
for what is perceived will be the greater good once the country is liberated. In a
moment of self-doubt, the appointed assassin questions the morality of the group’s
decision. Its leader sneers at him:
How you cling to your purity, young man. How afraid you are to soil your hands.
All right, stay pure! What good will it do? Why did you join us? Purity is an
idea for a yogi or a monk! You intellectuals and bourgeois anarchists use it as
a pretext for doing nothing. To do nothing, to remain motionless, arms at your
sides, wearing kid gloves. Well, I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I’ve
plunged them in filth and blood. But what do you hope? Do you think you can
govern innocently? (Sartre 1949, pp. 223–224)
Walzer frames the proposed moral dilemma like this: “Sometimes it is . . . right to
get one’s hands dirty. . . . And how can it be wrong to do what is right? Or, how can
we get our hands dirty by doing what we ought to do?” (1973, p. 164).
One of Walzer’s most famous examples involves a situation that anticipated
contemporary policy debates (Lauritzen 2010), whether to use torture to discover
the location of a bomb. This story depicts an elected official who has to decide
whether to
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authorize the torture of a captured rebel leader who knows, or probably knows,
the location of a number of bombs hidden in apartment buildings around the
city, set to go off in the next twenty-four hours. He orders the man tortured,
convinced that he must do so for the sake of the people who might otherwise
die in the explosions—even though he believes that torture is wrong, indeed
abominable, not just sometimes, but always. (Walzer, 1973, p. 167)
The question “Should I do a bad thing to accomplish a good thing?” is the foundation of the dirty hands literature. But philosophizing on this issue always seems to
revolve around a decision of the top leader. Walzer and others dwell on the right or
wrong of the leader’s soul, as if he or she is a god-like person set apart from everyone
else. What is missing from most analyses is recognition that:
almost every decision by a leader demands action by subordinate managers;
the subordinate managers, as individuals, have their own moral agency;
they have taken an oath to defend the constitution, not to obey the political
leader; and
to be legitimate, state decisions—especially difficult ones—must be made
through a democratic process, not unilaterally.
The Evolution of Authority and Legitimacy
In most early empires and kingdoms (pre–Magna Carta), a discussion about dirty
hands would not have made much sense. Rulers did what they wanted to, and that
was that. Few talked about whether it was proper. Roman and Persian emperors deified themselves, and Chinese emperors had the “Mandate of Heaven.” In medieval
Europe, kings claimed a divine right to rule to counter the power of the Roman
Catholic Church. Rulers were gods or selected by gods, and their word was law.
Government officials did what they were told or suffered the consequences.
Many yearned for an absolute leader, a benevolent dictator who would provide
answers to questions and solve problems. Plato’s Republic described an ideal situation in which philosopher-kings were trained from birth to lead the people. The
ancient Romans provided for the appointment of temporary dictators. Hobbes asserted that when people emerged from a “state of nature” they desired an absolute
ruler to protect them. Many of our stories promote this desire for a leader with the
answers. The legendary hero resisting authority has always been popular, at least in
the Western world. Aristotle in his Poetics outlined the idea of the tragic hero, and
Socrates drank hemlock rather than sacrifice his principles. Robin Hood is portrayed
as fighting King John’s absolutism, and William Tell as resisting the Hapsburgs.
Contemporary popular culture, too, is rife with characters like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, who are portrayed as “doing the right thing” while everyone
else complains that they are breaking the rules. That “right thing,” of course,
is what the hero (and the audience) “know” to be the right thing. And there’s
the rub—who knows what the “right” thing to do is? In heroic stories, as in the
dirty hands scenarios, the noble right action is evident to all, but the real world
is seldom that clear.
Contemporary management literature focuses on leaders making “tough decisions” or decisions that “are not popular.” It seems to long for a White Knight who
will save the day (Goatly 2006). Leaders are imagined as making heroic decisions
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Jonathan Anderson
for the good of all, but no one seems to consider that the subordinates who must
carry out the dirty work may have their own ideas of right and wrong.
At some point in this discussion, theorists almost always bring in the godfather
of dirty hands, Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote his famous little book The Prince
in the sixteenth century (see Constitution Society 2012c). Machiavelli was a career
diplomat giving advice to a local ruler in Italy on how to maintain power. His treatise
has become the archetype (I really cannot say “Bible”) of amoral, rational, political
calculation on the use of political power. In chapter 15, Machiavelli writes, “It is
necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to
make use of it or not according to necessity.” People trot out Machiavelli all the
time, either in disgust or admiration.
But the amazing thing is not that Machiavelli talks about doing bad to accomplish
good. Rather it is his seeming acknowledgement that a ruler’s actions may have to be
“Typically all the leader does is give
justified. The absolute right of the ruler is no
an order. The order comes down to
longer automatic. The Enlightenment (and
resistance to church authority) changed the
me, the public manager, and if it
discourse from divine right to some other
requires something illegal, immoral,
calculus.
or unconstitutional, and my political
Fast-forward a few centuries to the age
leader has ordered it, what am I to do?
of the state and the rule of law. Kings are no
Theorists never address this.”
longer, like Louis XIV, saying “L’état, c’est
moi.” Instead of just doing what they think
is best, rulers are supposed to act within the
law and pursue what is best for the nation, or in other words, the public interest.
The state and not the king is now in charge, and government actions are expected
to be for the good of the people rather than the whim of royalty.
Enter the democratic revolution—and it was not just a political revolt. It was a
dramatic change about who makes decisions on what is in the public interest. Beginning with the United States and France, the idea of who should govern shifted from
religious or secular absolutism to republicanism or democracy—rule by the people.
Who should rule is about who decides what is the right thing to do, or as Rohr put it,
“he who defines the public interest surely governs” (1991, p. 12). Political leaders
are not making decisions because they have unique access to the truth, but because
they have been elected by citizens. Legitimacy is determined not by knowledge or
expertise (as in the case of Plato’s philosopher-king), and not by nobility of purpose
(as in mythic stories), but by democratic representation.
While the state was to rule for the good of all, some still believed that leaders
should determine the public interest regardless of law. No longer an assertion of
divine right, this conveyed an implication of class right. Educated elites still ruled,
even in democratic America. And while the laws were made democratically, there
were some who said that leaders sometimes had to make decisions contrary to
democratically constructed law.
John Locke, sometimes seen as having inspired the U.S. Constitution, says in
his Second Treatise on Government (Constitution Society 2012d) that “public good
and advantage shall require . . . that the laws themselves should in some cases give
way to the executive power” (sec. 159). He explains that the leader has the “power
to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the
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law, and sometimes even against it” (sec. 160). In Federalist 70, Hamilton argued
that the U.S. president should be an “energetic” executive who can act unilaterally
for the public good, without checks and balances (Constitution Society 2012a; for
more on Locke and presidential prerogative, see Kleinerman 2007; Langston and
Lind 1991; Mattie 2005; Scigliano 1989).
But what is the public good? And how does the leader know it? Some say there
should be a process for eliciting the will of the citizens. Others say there is such a
process, and it is called elections: The elected leaders have been put in charge and
should do what they think best. The trouble is, that is not what the Constitution says.
The United States was founded on distrust of government. James Madison argued
in Federalist 51, his famous “If all men were angels . . .” tract, that the Constitution
provides checks and balances to human failings; it structures a government where
power is limited (see Constitution Society
2012b).
But dirty hands theorists want to undo that. “Dirty hands theorists keep generating
They say that sometimes the leader should articles about how political leaders
break the law for what he or she thinks is must do something bad for the good of
in the public interest, regardless of popular, all but never deal with the burden on
democratic will. They tell stories about leadme, the public manager.”
ers who, not unlike Dirty Harry, nobly violate
the law for what is implied to be the good of
all. Such narratives, like any good tale, create a bond with the rest of us, identifying
bad guys and good guys, and rhapsodizing on how the hero defeats the bad guys.
Sometime the hero has to do bad things to achieve what the story clearly identifies
as the good of all.
The Role of the Public Manager
I have gone through this simplistic scan of history and background literature to get
to the main point of this letter, and that is how the manager fits into the process of
dirty hands decisions. Here is the problem: When you fashion all these examples
of terrible things happening if the leader does not break the law, you portray an
imaginary and oversimplified world. You show the hero doing all the courageous
work, but that is not the way the world works. The examples all imagine that the dirty
actions are something done by the leader personally. You create a moral dilemma
and imagine it only involves one person—the leader! That may be okay when you
are telling a story, but in dealing with a real-life situation, practical realities need
to be included.
In fact, typically all the leader does is give an order. The order comes down to
me, the public manager, and if it requires something illegal, immoral, or unconstitutional, and my political leader has ordered it, what am I to do? Theorists never
address this. They have the leader dithering about whether this or that act is in the
civic interest and therefore justified. But they never go beyond the leader’s moral
struggle! When my boss tells me that the law needs to be broken in the public interest, I have a problem. And it is not just a personal disagreement; it goes against
every piece of ethics training I have ever had.
The literature of public administration ethics is wide and deep (a small sample might
include Bowman and Elliston 1988; Cooper 1990, 2001; Frederickson 1993; Menzel
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Jonathan Anderson
2007; Rohr 1989). The one thing in common throughout the literature is that no one
talks about whether and how it can be ethical to obey an illegal order. The theorists
all struggle with how a lawful order or institutional procedure might be contrary to
personal conviction. They all struggle with how to deal with an order one feels is
unethical. But none of them advocates the primacy of a personal determination of the
public interest. And no ethics training I have ever had suggests that I should put my
understanding of the public interest above the law. On the contrary, all give advice on
how to resist such pressures, which are portrayed as unethical in themselves.
So it is frustrating that dirty hands theorists keep generating articles about how
political leaders must do something bad for the good of all but never deal with the
burden on me, the public manager. Evidently,
their view of public managers is like Gareth
“A public manager must uphold the
Morgan’s (1986) metaphor of government
Constitution and obey the law. I took
as a machine: You throw a switch and things
an oath to do just that. Why would I be just happen. Don’t the theorists realize that
someone like me has to actually do the dirty
expected to act differently at the order
deed? The leader’s hands may be dirty metaof some leader?”
phorically, but mine will be covered with the
real dirt (or blood)! Does theory even recognize me as human, or am I just a depersonalized cog in the bureaucratic machine
(Hummel 1977)?
And when there is talk about doing something bad, the theorists rarely get into
the specifics of what “bad” is; no, this is almost never brought into the discussion.
Leaving out the dirty deed makes the rhetoric easier. The one time it is mentioned—
the example of torturing a terrorist to find a bomb—they carefully do not specify
what is meant by “torture.” Is it skin flaying? Genital crushing? Maybe raping the
terrorist’s family in front of him? Is that what I am supposed to do? Or am I just
supposed to do “nice” torture?
Other realities are ignored as well. It is just assumed, for the sake of theory, that
if you torture this person, the bomb will actually be found and lives saved. That is
certainly what happens in the stories. No discussion of how it is known that there
is a bomb in the first place—maybe there isn’t. No discussion about the supposed
certainty that this person is a terrorist; maybe it is somebody else. No discussion of
whether this particular terrorist knows where the bomb is—or whether you have to
go down the line torturing five, 50, or 500 possibly innocent persons before maybe
the right terrorist is discovered. And let’s not even get into the discussion of how
unreliable torture has been proved to be as a means to get at the truth (Costanzo and
Gerrity 2009). Once you talk about real-life examples, you need to be prepared to
confront practical realities. But under the guise of abstract, generalizing theory, the
real world is conveniently set aside.
The theorists also never seem to get around to specifying who, exactly, can order
me to break the law or where the authorization comes from. While the term “political leader” is sometimes used, the discussions rarely articulate who it includes.
City council members? Sheriffs? County treasurers? Elected dog catchers? Why
not? If permission to decide when the law should be obeyed is granted through an
election, are elected officeholders also authorized to violate the law in the public
interest? What about my politically appointed boss? And what about me? Where is
the line drawn, and why?
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But the thing that really fries me is the assumption that the political leader who
makes the decision will go through the pangs of personal, moral angst and feel bad
about the decision even while somehow making it, while everyone ignores the fact
that the leader will not be the one wielding the torture instruments. The leader will
not be cutting body parts off a human being or doing some other horrible thi…
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